


Astronomical Odds

by loonyBibliophile



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, marked soulmates au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyBibliophile/pseuds/loonyBibliophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I had a friend growing up, before I got the mark. If anyone in the world is my soulmate, it was him. But we haven’t seen each other in years, and likely never will. And that’s all right with me. I hardly need the fulfillment of a romantic relationship.”<br/>Jemma Simmons doesn't believe in fate, or soulmates. But despite her reservations, it turns out the universe has other plans for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astronomical Odds

“How can you just ‘not believe’ in soulmates?! I’ve seen your wrist, Jemma Simmons!” Skye is speaking so loudly she’s practically shouting. Simmons just rolls her eyes and tugs the leather cuff bracelet back down. 

“Just because I’ve got some silly symbol on my wrist doesn’t mean anyone else does. Maybe loads of people have it, on the other end of the spectrum. Maybe any number of people could be my future partner. An absurd theory, of course, but better than a one and only soulmate.”

“You’ve never even tried to find them?” Skye sounds almost sad when she speaks again, and Simmons looks back and watches the other woman trace the outline on her inner right wrist. Skye never hides the mark, always shoving sleeves up onto elbows so everyone can see the microchip pattern making ridges in her skin. 

“Nope. Besides, even if I did believe in such a silly thing, what good would looking do? Aren’t you just meant to find each other?” Simmons sat heavily down at the kitchen table of their small apartment, then pulled a packet of homework from her bag and set to work in her neat, small writing. 

“It leads you” she says, cryptic as ever, and Simmons tries to avoid rolling her eyes again and fails. 

“Skye.” She says, her voice softening “If you think they’re out there, whoever they are, this mysterious perfect match for you? You’ll find them. You’re too determined not to.” 

“But what about you?”

“What about me? I’ve got a best friend and I’ve got one PHD and another in the words, and I’ve got my brains! What more does a girl need, honestly.”

“Nobody needs their soulmate. It would be nice though.” Skye sounds so sad still, and Simmons knows the way she knows a lot of things it’s because of the boy with the curl hair and big ideas who swept Skye off her feet and then one day tugged off his watch to reveal half of a winding vine on his wrist, not the lines and sensors of a microchip. So Simmons shares more than she might have otherwise. 

“If I have a soulmate, anywhere in this world, I met him long before I ever had a mark on my wrist telling me so.” 

“Huh?”

“I had a friend growing up, before I got the mark. If anyone in the world is my soulmate, it was him. But we haven’t seen each other in years, and likely never will. And that’s all right with me. I hardly need the fulfillment of a romantic relationship.”

“What was he like?” Getting Simmons to talk about her life before university was like pulling teeth from an angry crocodile, so Skye’s curiosity was piqued whenever something, however small, was offered up. 

“Smart. Kind. We were eight, he lived next door to me, and I reckon he was my first real friend. Perhaps my only real friend, until you of course. He had curly light brown hair, or maybe it was dark blonde. And we used to sit up in his room and build things out of legos until mum called me home. My family moved when I was twelve, and I didn’t get the mark until sixteen.” 

“Why do you think it would be him?”

“Call it intuition.” Simmons shrugged.

“Why don’t you look for him?”

“I’ve got much bigger and better things to do than fall in love. It’s fine and dandy for those who want to seek it, but that’s just not where I am right now. And I’m not sure I ever will be. “

“You know, for someone who calls you their best friend, half the shit you do makes no sense to me.”

“Most beautiful things are hard to understand, Skye.” Simmons bats her lashes and grins, wide and playful, and Skye lets out a bark of laughter. 

Later that night, lying in her bed and staring at the blank white of her ceiling, Simmons thinks about the boy from her block. Not because she thinks he’s her soulmate, simply because she hadn’t realized she’d forgotten him, and now she was curious since she’d remembered. Maybe she should look him up. Just to see what he’s gotten up to, of course. 

She falls asleep with her hand wrapped about her left wrist, and the name ‘Leopold Fitz’ rolling around her head.

The next morning, over her daily tea and croissant breakfast, she types the same name she thought over the night before into her laptop, her keystrokes more confident than she feels about the entire endeavor. She recognizes his face in the about page of an article immediately, and she clicks it, only for her mouth to immediately drop in shock when the byline reveals his place of study for his PHD. MIT. When Skye comes stumbling out of her room later, Simmons starts talking immediately. 

“He’s here. All these years of not remembering him, and I remember him, and he’s here, of all places. The odds are astronomical, truly astonishingly enormous. If it wasn’t something I had just personally experienced, I wouldn’t believe it.”

“What are you on about?” Skye asks, voice yawning and half asleep. 

“Fitz!” Simmons nearly yells, waving a frantic hand at her laptop. “Leopold Fitz is, of all things, a bloody engineering student! Here! At our school!” 

“Wait… is that the kid? Did you look him up?”

“Yes!! Not, mind you, because I maybe at one point thought he might be my soulmate, but because I was curious. And he goes to school here. Here! Of all places!” Simmons looks frazzled and a little bit terrified, waving a corner of croissant around like a mad woman. Skye raises an eyebrow and pours a cup of coffee. 

“Are you going to find him?”

“I… I don’t know. I hadn’t decided yet.”

“I think you should find him” her words are barely identifiable around a mouthful of Trix, but Simmons finds his facebook and sends him a friend request anyway. He accepts within the hour, and Simmons is truly unsure of what to do with herself. As fate would have it, or, Simmons thinks to herself, as it would have it if she believed in such silly things, she doesn’t have to work out what to do. Because she runs into him in the student café. Quite literally. 

“Oh, bloody hell!” the curse slips clumsily from his lips as she slams into him, rushing out with coffee in one hand and an open copy of Madame Bovary in the other. She drops the coffee with a quiet oh, and it sloshes over her shoes as she stares at him. He stares back, blinking. 

“Oh.” She says again, slightly louder. She tugs self-consciously at the black leather over her left wrist. 

“Hi.” He says back. He watches her wrist and blinks again, and she notes his covered right wrist. 

“I’m sorry.” She splutters finally, noticing that his jumper is splashed with coffee.

“It’s uh, it’s alright. It’ll live.” He shrugs, and the half smile on his face is familiar, even though three days before she could hardly have recalled it. 

“Okay.” 

“Jemma Simmons.” He mumbles, shaking his head and his eyes full of wonder. “Lord, what were the odds of that?” he chuckles and smiles again. 

“That’s what I thought! Genuinely ridiculous.” She grins back.

“What’s your class schedule? We could grab lunch? Catch up?”

“I’m done for the day, actually.”

“Another coincidence. So am I.” he smiles, and she smiles back. “I’ve just gone shopping, if you still drink tea. We could run back to my place and eat there. Quieter. Easier to talk. If that’s not too odd. I promise I’ve no ill intent, I think my roommate is there even.”

“Why not?” Simmons says with a nod and a smile, and follows him easily across campus. 

His dorm room is pleasantly warm, and his roommate, a very tall man with very nice arms named Trip is indeed there. Simmons notes his bare wrists with a smile, and makes a note to tell Skye to keep an eye out for him. His left wrist bears the echo of Skye’s microchip, white lines easily visible on his darker skin. 

“D’you still take your tea with too much sugar?” Fitz smirks as he pours from the red kettle and Simmons rolls her eyes. 

“Oh, hush up. And yes.” 

“Some things never change.” He sighs dramatically, but his eyes twinkle playfully when he looks at her.

It is strangely easy, Simmons thinks, to fall back into a pattern of hanging out with Fitz. He’s even more brilliant than she remembers, and staying up far too late debating becomes the norm within a matter of weeks. Skye asks her daily what’s inscribed on the flesh of his wrist, but Simmons always tells her she doesn’t know. And it’s true. The heavy gold watch, his grandfather’s, Fitz wears is firmly fixed over his mark. He never asks what’s under the leather on hers and she never asks about his. She’s not sure why they’ve come to this unspoken agreement, but it is what it is. 

It’s a snowy afternoon in January, when the early day is too dark to feel like day, when they kiss for the first time. His nose is cold against her face, but his breath and lips are warm, and his hands are hot on the back of her neck. She has to lean up on her toes to kiss him, but only barely, and slips her fingers beneath the fabric of his beanie. 

“And you STILL don’t know what it is?” Skye asks, months later, her voice incredulous as she watches Simmons do homework in one of Fitz’s jumpers. Simmons nods. 

“Not a clue.” 

“And if it’s not the other half of yours?”

“Does it matter? We’re happy. That’s what matters.” Simmons looks up from the work in front of her and shrugs easily. Skye shakes her head and moves to argue her point further, when a very tall and very shirtless man leans on the frame of Skye’s doorway. 

“Hey Simmons.” Trip says, an easy smile on his face. 

“Hello, Trip.” 

“You coming back anytime soon or am I gonna have to pick you up again?” he turns to Skye and raises one eyebrow in challenge. When she doesn’t move, he scoops her easily over one shoulder and carries her back into her room. Simmons chuckles wryly when the door slides shut. Antoine has been good for Skye, she thinks. A good friend and a good person, and she hasn’t seen Skye smile so much in ages. 

“Does it matter? Does it matter to you?” she finally asks one night, many months later, snowed into his childhood home on break from school. Their legs are tangled together and his heart beat is solid beneath her cheek, and she can’t help but toy with the watch on his wrist. Toy with, but never try to look beneath or remove. 

“Depends.” he says with a shrug, tilting her up to watch him speak. “Does it matter to you?”

“Not a bit.” She shakes her head, staring up at him. 

“Then no. Mark or no mark, I’ve got you, and as long as you’re alright with that, that’s what matters.” 

Simmons goes quiet after that, and stares at her toes. Fitz runs his fingers through her hair, not breaking the silence to let her think. She still wears a leather cuff on her left wrist, though it’s a different one now, a gift from Fitz. Dark blue with silver tooling and laces. Biting her lip, she tugs the laces undone, and loosens the cuff from her skin before letting it drop from the bed. As long as it didn’t matter, she might as well let him see. She feels him, his chest pressed to her back, suck in a breath as her fingers work. Just visible on her pale wrist are white lines, in half the shape of the alchemical symbol for aqua vitae. A circle, and a diagonal line, and a half circle on the other end. 

“Jemma…” Fitz whispers softly, and leans down to kiss her, fingers tangled in her hair against her neck. He pulls away, and threads his arms under her own and around her waist, and unbuckles the heavy watch from his wrist. When it falls into her lap, she sees the circles and diagonal lines of her own skin reflected on his. She leans up and kisses him again, his skin warm and familiar below her fingers. 

“What were the odds?” she whispers against his lips, with the barest of smirks. 

“Astronomical. Truly” he smirks back and smoothes his hands over her cheeks and kisses her once more.


End file.
